In case you haven’t yet had the chance to check out Musicophilia‘s new sister-blog, Musicophilia Daily, here’s a sampling of what’s been posted there in the first week (really, four days). It’s not a carefully crafted mix in the usual Musicophilia style; but that’s sort of the point: Musicophlia Daily is a way to share music spontaneously, even more eclectically than in Musicophilia’s mixes, and so this “sampler” is presented in the order in which tracks were posted at Daily. For more information (and full-length tracks, for those edited/truncated in this sampler, and links to full-album downloads) on any track/artist, click the link for any track in the tracklist below. The mix is available for download beyond the “more…” link, but in the style of Daily, I’m also including a streaming version. If you like what you hear, you should consider subscribing to Musicophilia Daily, as I don’t think I’ll do these sort of week-in-review mixes often, and it’s going to be a lot of fun over there. Thanks for listening!

Share this:

Like this:

Well, unfortunately that didn’t take long. . . It seems that at least for some people, the audio streams at the brand-new Musicophilia Daily blog are non-funcioning: they simply “buffer” indefinitely. This may be an issue with the way in which I was attempting to host the files (for free). If anyone has this issue–please let me know. So I ask for your help. Does anyone reading/listening to Musicophilia know a stable way to host an additional 5-20MB per day, with probably around 1500+/-MB bandwidth per day? I can’t really afford to pay for hosting costs, but maybe they’re more reasonable than I realise–so does anyone know an inexpensive way to host files along those numbers? Or, hope of hopes–is anyone out there a big fan of Musicophilia who has access to some hosting space and bandwidth who would contribute to the cause? Don’t be shy now, friends–I need your help!

Share this:

Like this:

After five months, 30,000 views, and over 6,600 downloads of more than 30 mixes, it’s time for Musicophilia to expand. My ultimate goal when I started blogging was to help people hear great music, and hopefully get inspired to support the featured artists and independent music shops. I love mixes, and I think they can have value in and of themselves; but they take a lot of time (for mixers and listeners) and energy, and have their own inherent limitations in terms of variety and spontaneity. So to further Musicophilia’s goal, I’d like to have the flexibility to move beyond the mix-only format, to share individual tracks, links to recommended posts at other blogs, videos, reviews, out-of-print albums, previews of upcoming mixes, questions, and ideas; all sharing the spirit and sounds of Musicophilia. However, I would like to do so without cluttering up Musicophilia–which will continue to focus on carefully crafted mixes–or forcing more content on its subscribers than they bargained for. To that end, I’d like to present Musicophilia Daily. I encourage you to subscribe in order to automatically receive new updates. Further details after “more…”. Head over to Musicophilia Daily for further information. Thanks for listening!

Like this:

Following my contribution from last week, ‘Tall Stories of Evil Gris-Gris,’ I’m proud to bring you the second part of Musicophilia’s (first) “blog swap” from my friend and mix-making hero Ettiem of the Gris Gris On Your Doorstep blog: ‘Human Heads‘. Ettiem has said he mixes “with a mind toward soundtrackiness,” and his mastery of narrative flow (both on mixes and live) certainly inspired me to put extra care into my mixes over the years. But Ettiem has an ability to create a compelling structure while retaining a rawer, dirtier, thicker energy than my own mixes ever achieve. So if ‘Tall Stories of Evil Gris-Gris‘ was a scary story whispered at 4am in a swamp shack, ‘Human Heads‘ is a 70’s party-horror-action flick set on the road from the shack to the French Quarter during Mardi-Gras. Despite beginning with birdsound, things quickly take a turn for the weird, hot and funky, and the beats don’t stop. So take the ride–and don’t forget to look around at Gris Gris On Your Doorstep, grab some of the choice cuts he’s offering there, and maybe drop him a note asking for more killer mixes!

¶

Heating up the humid air on ‘Human Heads’ are Cheval Fou, Verne Langdon, the Temptations doing their best freak-out, hot-shit Ultrafunk, The Ventures, Parliament, James Last, Brain Donor, Coloured Balls, proto-Italo heroes Chrisma channeling Neu, Savage Ressurection, Tommy James + The Shondells in an Ettiem remix, and War. If you love hard funky beats, if you love strings, if you love thick basslines and fuzzed-out psych-Kraut madness, if you love dirty-but-tight mixing: don’t miss this one. Full download and tracklist after the “more…” link.

Like this:

I think I’ve been a non-practicing producer since I got my first pair of headphones: I’ve always been pulled in by the staging of sound, the dryness or wetness of it, the sense of music pulling or pushing one forward, spinning you around, the mysteriouss relationship between timbre and emotion. Eventually, I began to hear the world around me as music, too–how different spaces and different noises also created emotions. I love the way both music and sounds in an environment literally feel in my ears, and the way my body responds even before my mind can. And so eventually, as my own music was limited by my talent and means, and none of my friends was begging me to produce their records, I started mixing (instead of compiling) “finished” music together, with idea that mixed music–treated as sonic/emotional raw material–could at least temporarily replicate our full sensory intake, including a sense of time, and perhaps even call us to a heightened sensory state. ‘Adrift‘ was the first mix where I fully embraced this approach, the results of which I’ve decided with unrepentant nerdiness to call the ‘Sensory Replication Series‘.

¶

At a brief 31 minutes, ‘Adrift‘ is by far the simplest of this series, in technical terms. Consisting of ten primary tracks only sometimes intermingled (unlike later, more ambitious mixes that involved remixing, dubbing, or weaving six tracks together at once) it relies on the way its component pieces fit harmoniously together. Looking at the artists in the tracklist, ‘Adrift’ might seem to be a somewhat edgy, cerebral affair; but in fact, this is mysterious, sensual, even sweet music, and I’m not certain whether I’ve since matched the purely intoxication of this mix. I find this music heartbreaking in the most delicious way. These mixes tend to be the least popular here at Musicophilia, but I hope that for those who allow themselves to drift in, they offer a listening experience outside the every-day.

¶

Mostly instrumental, this mix brings you the most unabashedly beautiful, emotional sides of John Cale, Faust, Rachel’s, This Heat, Mnemonists, Harmonia, Neu, Holger Czukay and Brian Eno (here interpolating Pachelbel with what would seem to be a mental excercise but which is almost more affecting than the original, for me). The timecode provided with the tracklist is very approximate; but I’d suggest you basically ignore it, and try to let the trainspotting tendency to dissipate. I think you’ll be amazed how quickly 31 minutes passes in this territory. If you do enjoy this mix, please don’t miss the most recent addition to the series, ‘Tall Stories of Evil Gris-Gris,’ a dirtier, haunted, swampy, funky, twisted and more beat-oriented approach to the Senrory Replication idea. Full tracklist and download after the “more…” link.

Musicophilia is happy to announce a first with this mix: a blog-swap of custom-made mixes (and hopefully not the last). I’ve created this mix, ‘Tall Stories of Evil Gris-Gris,’ specially for my friend and musical role-model Ettiem and his ‘Gris-Gris On Your Doorstep‘ blog–and following shortly, he’ll be presenting Musicophilia with a special mix of his own. I’ve had a long-standing desire to use the Dr. John track ‘I Walk on Gilded Splinters’ as the cornerstone of a mix. When Ettiem proposed the blog-swap idea, I took the murky, slightly dark, beat-oriented tendencies of Ettiem’s blog and music and my desire to revisit the heavy-mixing techniques of the ‘Sensory Replication Series‘ but with a focus on songs (music with vocals and lyrics) and realised I had the opportunity I’d been waiting for. The title of his blog clinched the deal. Other ‘Sensory Replication’ mixes have been largely instrumental, immersive but hazy soundscapes, abstract scores to imaginary films, often involving upwards of six tracks brewing at any given time. With ‘Evil Gris-Gris,’ I wanted cracked scary stories, spiritual folk tales, cautionary legends told at a witching hour in a shack on stilts in a swamp (though one that’s incongruously filled with beeping, half-broken technology). In terms of mix method, I wanted to restrict most of the overlapping to “duets” between a storyteller and a complimentary (or tension-producing) instrumental work of pure sound. I’m very happy with the results, and hope that people will let the slight madness creep in and rest awhile.

¶

Contributing the ‘tall stories’ (a phrasing borrowed from the included dubbed-up Leadbelly track) are such modern folklorists as David Sylvian, The Spaceape with Kode 9, David Thomas (of Pere Ubu), Muddy Waters, Low, The Knife, an ancient-sounding Shona folk musician, The For Carnation, Stina Nordenstam, Arto Lindsay, Disco Inferno, Charles Dodge‘s early electronically-created voices, Hector Zazou with Bony Bikaye, Anja Garbarek, Brigitte Fontaine and Areski, and of course, Dr. John. Making the roux of sound around the stories: David Byrne, Pierre Henry, Scanner, Pole, J Dilla, Ike Yard, Edgar Varese, Shriekback, Charles Ives, Squarepusher, Tangerine Dream, Iannis Xenakis, and Gruppo D’Improvvisazione Nuova Consananza. Hopefully the end result is a way-in in either direction for those who favor lyric-based songs, or those who obsess over sound itself (and it should be a comfortable, if haunted home for the freaks like me who’re equally obsessed with both). From a “avenue for creative energy” perspective, this mix (and the other ‘Sensory Replication‘ mixes) is what I most enjoy and put the most time and energy into creating. So I hope you’ll head over to Gris-Gris at the link below the “more…” and give it a (headphones-on) listen–and while you’re there, do yourself a favor and explore the gumbo Ettiem’s got cooking.

Just a quick technical note: I briefly used Feedburner for new RSS subscriptions to Musicophilia, without realising that doing so created a separate, Feedburner-specific feed. If you subscribed sometime in January using the little “subscribe” logo at the upper right of the blog, you may be using this feed in your reader (with the address “feeds.feedburner.com/Musicophilia”). I’ve now canceled this feed, in order to consolidate back to the default feed. For most of you, your reader should be automatically re-directed to the default feed (at least temporarily, but probably permanently). However, you may want to check and make sure your subscription is permanently set to the default feed (“musicophilia.wordpress.com/feed/”) to ensure you continue to receive new mixes from Musicophilia in your reader.

Share this:

Like this:

As exciting as it must have felt if you were in the right place with the right people in 1981, my guess is that within a couple years it was evident that 1981 was a high-water mark for arty weirdo fusion un-rock rock music, and things had moved on. Most of the music on the ‘1981’ box set represents this climax, and it doesn’t sound much like what your average person on the street thinks of when they think of “80s music”. And not just because some of it was obscure even in its day; but rather because although it would inspire a small minority, a lot of music on the ‘1981’ set is actually the sound of the end of something, not a beginning. By contrast, the music on ‘Computer,’ the seventh disc of the 1981 set, presents the birth of what most would identify as “80s music”. This is “Electropop,” this is “New Wave,” this is “New Pop,” with a little bit of “New Romantic” for good measure–unabashed pop melodiousness, accompanied by synths and lead by keyboards, informed by the beginnings of an obsession with chorus, delay, and reverbed drums. But–this is still 1981, so it all feels a little innocent, a little rough around the edges; the art-school diplomas and the bedsit squats and the situationist screeds still peek out from behind the bigger hairdos and the pleated trousers and the faux-corporate rhetoric about band-as-brand and taking on the system through the system. ‘Computer‘ is the sound of turning at a crossroads. But I would say it’s far from a lamentation of something lost–this music is above all else about smiling in the face of uncertainty.

¶

This isn’t electro-disco or Italo or Hi-NRG. This is electronic-based pop and some of it was quite popular: Depeche Mode, Devo, Human League, Duran Duran, Gary Numan, Soft Cell and the Cars you’ll recognise from the radio even if you were in diapers in 1981. And most will most likely know Thomas Dolby (at least by way of John Hughes), Annie Lennox’s Eurythmics (with half of Can), Cybotron, OMD, The Buggles and of course the godfathers, Kraftwerk (here with probably one of my top 5 tracks of 1981). But the trick is, this isn’t quite these bands as you might best recognise them, though depending on your proclivities, it might be these bands as you best enjoy them. These staples are joined by the darker or slightly odder likes of Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft, The Associates, Heaven 17 (ex-Human League), the Plastics, Yello, the lovely New Musik, Manuel Gottsching quietly “inventing” House, Tuxedomoon, Chris & Cosey (the softer side of Throbbing Gristle), Moev, Classix Nouveaux, and the wonderful Blue Nile with a song of pure unadulterated joy. Full tracklist and download link are after the “more…” link. And keep on the lookout of the next couple months for the final two mixes from the ‘1981’ box.

Like this:

This may be unnecessary. I may be overreaching like some old geezer who’s just read about “this Web 2.0 thing on the internets tube” and makes a MySpace band page for his chihuahua. But having recently given in to signing over my soul at Facebook.com, and being keen to make Musicophilia more of a means for interacting with fellow addicts to sound: I’ve started a group called “Musicophiliacs” and I’d like to invite you to join. It isn’t a group in any way devoted to this blog or the music it covers per se; I just like the (fake) word “musicophilia,” and its broad-umbrella possibilities–so I’m reusing it. I’ve billed the group as:

“A place for music-loving friends to share mixes, make recommendations, post links, propagate the new and new-to-you, promote your own music and writing, etc.”

Maybe we’re all over-saturated and over-linked and our RSS readers are bursting at the seams already–but I thought we could give it a shot, and see if it could end up being a slightly more personal, personable way to share our mutual love of sound with a smaller community. So please feel free to join in, link us to places of interest, invite other hard-core music geeks–we’ll see what we can do with it.

¶

Share this:

Like this:

Completing a triology (for now) of mixes focusing on leading female artists of the post-punk milieu, here is ‘The Young Lady’s Post-Punk Handbook, Volume Three’. Taken with volumes One and Two, the mix serves as an introduction to what is arguably the least male-centric, most maleable and voraciously all-encompasing form rock and roll has ever taken in post-punk of the late 70s and 80s. I generally view post-punk an extension of the artistic sensibilities of outre music of the late 60s and 70s (from the Velvet Underground and the Stooges to Can and Faust to Kraftwerk and Roxy Music, but also infused with heady funk, dub, Afrobeat and even musique concret); but even these predecessors tended to work in male-dominated idioms (though giving us major post-punk fore-mothers like Nico, Yoko Ono and Brigitte Fontaine). One could argue for both a political and artistic “feminine/feminist” quality in post-punk (as made by women, but also by many men); and music on these mixes could be cited as evidence of newly heard female qualities brought to an interpretation of rock in these years. But what’s interesting to me is that the women of post-punk seem to have felt completely free to express their feminine and masculine and simply human qualities freely. Few female musicians of post-punk seem to be “playing a man’s game,” nor presenting a “version” of the main channel, nor catering to male expectations of the Rock Chick (certainly not in an unproblematised, unironic way). These figures stand as central to my understanding of this sort of music as any men. And I feel they’re recognised broadly as pillars of the music. But having presented these mixes, I’d be very keen to hear your ideas: had you ever thought particularly one way or another about women in post-punk; are there identifiable ways in which women shaped post-punk, or was post-punk simply rock’s first androgynous embodiment; do you agree women are central to the story of post-punk, or were they in fact marginalised at the time? (I’d be especially curious to hear the experiences of those of you who were “there,” and not in diapers like myself.) As for ‘Volume Three’ specifically: this mix is perhaps slightly spookier, more off-kilter, and a little darker than the previous two mixes. And yet–I think you’d be hard pressed to fit much of it into a traditional “femme fatale,” “chanteause” mold. There are as many unique and individual voices here as there are artists.

¶

Included artists this round are the Creatures, Siouxsie’s percussion-centric vehicle; early Eurythmics and Phew, both featuring the ryhthm (and loops) section of Can; beat-happy ESG, Maximum Joy, and Los Microwaves; ever-enigmatic and very underrated Ludus; scuzzy electro-weirdos Crash Course in Science, primed for rediscovery; Grace Jones at her most post-punk, making her own thing of Iggy Pop; New York queen Lydia Lunch with her own inimitably cracked and macabre take on “Gloomy Sunday;” under-heard Marilyn & The Movie Stars of the fecund post-No Wave scene; the quietly forceful Young Marble Giants; and the unabashedly epic and “rock-y” Pretenders. Full tracklist and download link follow “more…”. [I’d like to welcome the readers of the Typical Girls mailing list–I’d certainly love to hear your take on what all this music means! Your intro page alone captures the bulk of the remaining artists I’ve got in mind for future volumes of this series. You’ll also want to check out the ‘1981‘ and ‘Post-Punk Miniatures‘ series and the ‘Post Post-Punk‘ mix, if you get a chance–but I imagine you’d find a lot to like in the pre-punk material on which Musicophilia also focuses.]

Volume Two of ‘The Young Lady’s Post-Punk Handbook’ continues an exploration of some of the contributions of women to post-punk sounds and culture begun with Volume One, and which will be continued in a third volume. As I stated previously, women don’t seem to be outside of or secondary to the main artistic and cultural thrust of the post-punk milieu, and so this mix is just as much an introduction to post-punk’s variety and energy as it is any sort of sub-story. That said, several tracks on this mix can be heard as a feminine/feminist perspective on a number of the central ideological concerns of post-punk: questioning of the centrality of binary romantic love to life and society; gender inequality and its parallels to racial and economic inequality; and an ambivalent relationship with notions of hipness and “cool,” among other themes. The titles might suggest a politicised or satirical reading: “It’s Obvious,” “Love und Romance,” “52 Girls,” “Boy,” “That’s The Way Boys Are,” “But I’m Not;” and they will likely reward such a listening. But the post-punks were focused on the artistic, the musical, the visceral at least as much as the political and the polemical: they’d learned the lesson Fela, Bob Marley, or James Brown taught: that the message goes down best with a groove (even if that groove tended to be a little bent, with the post-punks). If this is political music, it certainly isn’t po-faced politics.

¶

Over a 45-minute mix, you’ll find Family Fodder, one of my top five post-punk bands who rarely fail to excite new listeners; Chris & Cosey (with the only track repeated from the ‘1981’ set); Japan’s goofy-fun Plastics; Georgia’s Pylon and the B-52’s; The Slits, the Au Pairs, Vivien Goldman and less-heard post-No Wavers Y Pants with wickedly subversive skewerings of traditional gender expectations and concepts of romance (as well as of the traditional electrified masculinity of Rock); the slinky Swamp Children; the earliest, maddest Cocteau Twins; the smooth bossa-post-punk of Antena; and electro-tinged tracks from Siouxsie & The Banshees and Thick Pigeon. Be sure to grab Volume One if you have not already, and be sure to grab Volume Three in the near future. Full tracklist and download link after the “more…” link.

The first mix of a three-part series, Volume 1 of ‘The Young Lady’s Post-Punk Handbook’ is Musicophilia’s first mix-by-request, based on a 2-disc set I put together several years ago [here are ‘Volume Two‘ and ‘Volume Three‘]. Yet another reason I view “post-punk” as both distinct from and superior to “punk” is that it has little need for the traditional machismo of hard/arena/punk rock; indeed, it might be argued that a degree of political feminism and personal androgyny were prized or even required qualities of the ideal post-punk artist. While I’m sure the ideal was rarely achieved, it would be hard to deny that seldom in its history has the Boys Club of Rock and Roll been more infiltrated by women as equal participants. In a way, it seems slightly odd to explore “the role of women in post-punk” because I don’t want to ghettoise or marginalise it–women were so central that there is none of the feeling of searching for exceptions to the rule here: many of the artists featured are Big Names, who’d make any top-40 list of Most Important Post-Punk Bands. However, singling women out only illustrates their centrality: you could play these mixes for a post-punk neophyte, and they would come away with a good sense of the breadth and depth of the fertile era/ethos; but they might not even notice, if you didn’t point it out, that the mix focuses on women. So listen with your Gender Studies and Subaltern Political History caps on if you want–but you certainly won’t have to. As long as you’re enjoying the music–and there’s no shortage of top-shelf tracks here–you’re getting what is important about the shifts post-punk brought to art-rock music.

The second ‘Lullaby’ mix in the ongoing Miniatures series is (like its predecessor, the early-70s-oriented ‘Les Miniatures‘ mixes and the ‘Miniatures : Post-Punk’ mixes) an exercise in maximum variety in the minimum span of time. So in roughly thirty-one minutes, you’ll hear twenty tracks all less than two minutes in duration, showcasing spare guitar sketches, folk whispers, one-line stories, minor-key Brazilian jazz, a plaintive Country reproach on the state of your soul, and singer-songwriters and indie-rockers and Jamaican folk-singers and Psych-popsters singing songs of regret and nostalgia. And that’s less than half of it. It all adds up to a nap-length dream of sweet simplicity, a little reverie tinged with sadness, before a far happier day tomorrow.

¶

Heard here in miniature are John Cage, Astrud Gilberto, Colin Newman, Mike Redmann, the Shaggs, Tom Waits, Hank Williams, Built to Spill, Sam Phillips, Neil Young, Vashti Bunyan, Stan Getz with Charlie Byrd, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Ravel, John Fahey, The Zombies and Uncle Tupelo, as well as folk musicians from Jamaica and Peru. Full tracklist and download link are after “more…”.

Share this:

Like this:

If you’d been trying to download Volume 4 of the recent ‘Les Rythmes du Monde‘ mix set without success, a new download at a new link is now available. Please let me know if you encounter further difficulties.

There have been a number of outages and non-functioning download links lately. Hopefully this is a temporary problem. If it turns out to be systemic, does anyone have another upload/download service they would recommend? I’ve liked Mediafire so far–they seem to be less restrictive of downloads, they don’t try to sell download privileges a la RapidShare, and they let me organise and keep reasonable track of my uploaded mixes without deleting those that are not frequently downloaded. Any advice is helpful, thanks.

Share this:

Like this:

Recent events and a continuing uncertainty/curiosity have prompted me to do another talky post (the bulk of which I’ll hide behind the “more…” link). I’m my own worst editor, so my aplogies in advance. But I would really appreciate your participation in creating a discussion on the ethicality of mix-blogging, mp3-blogging, OOP-Only-versus-All-Music-Shared, the relationship between artists and listeners, and “who still pays for music”. If you’re in a hurry, I’ll post a couple polls here first, and you can certainly leave it at that. But if you have a minute, read on and then share your thoughts—even if they’re just “you’re a worrywort, get over yourself”. My thanks, either way. (Polls, questions, and something like an essay after the “more…” link.)

Share this:

Like this:

Most music geeks do an end-of-year Top 50 or 25 or 100 albums each year; without one, a year doesn’t really feel complete. But I haven’t really had one since about 200o and 2001 (Erykah Badu’s ‘Mama’s Gun’ and Sam Phillips’ ‘Fan Dance’ at #1, if I remember). I tried my hand at a 2008 mix (cheating in some 2007) but I couldn’t say it was a “best of,” in either the “authoritative objective” school (“important”) nor the “personal subjective” (“good”) approach; it’s just what I heard that stuck with me. As far as 2008 goes, I have a lot yet to discover.

¶

But 2008 was an incredibly fertile year for musical discovery of music from the other 115-odd years of recorded music. Many of those discoveries mingled with old favorites in the mixes here at Musicophilia. So in the interest of those for whom my new-to-me discoveries remain new-to-them, here is a Best-of-2008-Non-2008-Discoveries list (in no particular order). Perhaps it will provide another opportunity to peruse the BUY. MUSIC. links to the right, and help keep me an honest music-pusher. . . To be sure, Exiled Records (Portland, OR’s finest) and Dusty Groove were good to me last year. Please share with us some of your top non-2008 discoveries of 2008 in the comments section–we’re in this addiction together.

Share this:

Like this:

Note: Volume 4 has been down, and has been replaced with a new upload and a new download link.

‘Le Meilleur de Les Rythmes du Monde” represents the natural progression in the compilations of the Musique du Monde label from the late 60s/early 70s to the late 70s/early 80s. Funk bass, latin percussion, soul breaks, electronic and musique concrete experimentation, sound library and soundtrack string flourishes, dub production, perfect-pop tunefulness, Kraut-rock drive—these are the key ingredients of the earlier ‘Le Tour du Monde‘ compilations. And these sources make up the DNA of ‘Les Rythmes du Monde,’ as it mutates into disco, electro-pop, New Wave, post-punk and electro-disco. If you know you love Giorgio Moroder, you’ll find a feast to devour here—all the vocoders, four-on-the-floor beats, sexuality and sensuality, stories of robot love, trips through outer space, and comic book science you could want. But these mixes are not kitschy, so if you don’t know if you love Moroder, you don’t know if you can lose yourself in the beat—this mix will try its best to sway you, and it may well sweep you off your feet. This is cool as cool as the iciest post-punk—and twice as fun as most. It’s a 4xLP set, featuring over 200 minutes of music, much of it beatmatched; fifty-two artists and fifty three tracks from twelve countries and four years, 1977-1981. It’s my biggest single-shot undertaking since the ‘1981‘ set, a long while in the making. I hope you’ll enjoy it, and pass it on to friends who need to see the (disco-ball-refracted laser) light.

¶

Italians do it better with il maestro Giorgio Moroder twice, and further featuring his indelible production for Three Degrees, Donna Summer, Munich Machine, and Sparks. Telex are here, as well as related projects Transvolta and Electronic System; and fellow Belgians Trevor and Geoff Bastow, and pre-Honeymoon Killers Aksak Maboul. Many of Daft Punks French forefathers are here: Moon Birds, Space Art, Droids, Roland Bocquet, Jean-Phillippe Goude, Heldon, the elusive Black Devil, Venus Gang and Francis Rimbert. Germany brings us godfathers Kraftwerk and Can (from their underrated late work), with Tangerine Dream’s Peter Baumann-crafted Leda, Gina X Performance and Liaisons Dangereuses. From Japan, Akira Sakata, Yellow Magic Orchestra and solo work from Ryuichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono. Brits found here include Human League splitters B.E.F. and pseudonymic League Orchestra Unlimited; as well as Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, This Heat (with the seminal “24-Track Loop”), Ultravox’s John Foxx, XTC’s Andy “Mr.” Partridge, and Tortoise-blueprinting Brian Eno. Grace Jones is here (Jamaican-American), along with South Africa’s Hot R.S. (with an unlikely but amazing cover of “In A Gadda Da Vida,”) Australia’s Essendon Airport, Canadian proto Hi-NRGers Lime, and the Soviets Zodiac. The USA rounds it out with heros Patrick Cowley, Prince, Marvin Gaye, Hamilton Bohannon, Funkadelic, and Suicide; with lesser knowns Industry (whose psycho proto-jungle will blow your mind), Chromium, and hardly least, Arthur Russel’s Loose Joints. This set is dedicated to my friends at the Rhythm Room, who’ve spun this web for years, and without whom I would’ve spent years in the musical wilderness without any of this music. Let me know if you enjoy these mixes, and if you’re already in the know with these “Rythmes,” I’d love to hear any suggestions for further exploration. Full tracklist, sleeve notes, reissue notes and FOUR download links (with complete album art) follow “more…”.

While rather more ambitious things are afoot, I thought we could start the new year on a mellow note. So the ‘Miniatures‘ series is continued with ‘Lullaby No. 1,’ the first of two such mixes currently completed. The structure is the same here as on previous ‘Miniatures’ mixes: two-minutes-or-less track lengths, and mixes under forty-five minutes. For the most part eschewing the post-punk sounds and Musique du Monde miasma of the previous ‘Miniatures’ incarnations, this mix follows its title with songs drawn mostly from the quiet, spare worlds of folk and singer-songwriter music, sprinkled with softer samplings of the avant-garde, indie rock, traditional “world” folk music, and even a little proto-punk. So while this mix mostly whispers, it does so in a Musicophilia-style breadth of musical languages.

¶

In just under thirty-one minutes, you’ll hear 21 tracks from those you’d predict, like Nick Drake, Jeremy Enigk (from his ‘Return of the Frog Queen,’ a minor chamber-pop masterpiece you shouldn’t overlook due to emo associations), Bob Dylan, Big Star, Syd Barrett, Willie Nelson, Low, Mark Kozelek, Leo Kottke, and Cat Power; and also from some you might not expect, like the Modern Lovers, Bjork, a Burmese choir, a Bali gamelan orchestra, Can, Moondog, Tyrannocaurus Rex, and Felt. Download link and tracklist after the “more…” link.

Share this:

Like this:

One-quarter year in, and it’s been a heck of a trip so far. There’s been so much greater a response than I ever considered possible, and what began as “just a repository for old mixes” has become a real project, something that’s made a habit of which I was almost embarrassed seem worthwhile and quasi-respectable. Even my girlfriend has said she approves of my “time well wasted”. Three months, nearly 16,000 visits, 3,400 mixes heard, 21 mixes and albums posted, dozens of comments and links. I thank each and every one of you who has listened, downloaded, commented, corresponded, told friends, and linked to or blogged about the project. Your participation makes what could otherwise be a rather solitary hobby into something that feels like a community undertaking, and I encourage anyone to talk to me about cross-posts, guest-mixing, co-blogging, or any other project we can come up with. I’ve got a lot planned, nearly 20 mixes nearing completion or under way, so I hope the well won’t dry up any time soon, as long as people trust their ears to mine. This love of music is that much better when it’s shared. As always, comments are very much appreciated, so let me know what you’d like to see next, or suggest ideas, make requests, etc. Click the “more…” link for a visual summary of all the mixes issued thus far in chronological order, and a sneak-peak of what’s soon to come. Check here and here for more information about Musicophilia in general. Thanks, and I hope you’re enjoying the music.

Share this:

Like this:

Finally, the year-end mix nobody’s been waiting for! It will probably come as no surprise to those who’ve downloaded any of Musicophilia’s mixes that I’m not particularly focused on the tiny sliver of all recorded music history that is now. It’s not that I doubt there’s good stuff being made—I’m completely certain there’s a lot of it. It’s just that sometime around 1999, I remember buying a Mogwai CD, puting it on, and suddenly having the realization: “I have no interest in this music whatsoever”. (In fact specific to the disc, I hated it, and in a fairly rare act of dramatic symbolism I literally threw it away.) It wasn’t that it was particularly surprising that another disc of generic post-rock would let me down—it’s just that it made me realise I never wanted to buy another disc full of music I wasn’t viscerally excited by, or that didn’t at least expanded my understanding of music. And I also recognized that I’d been (denying) having a lot of similar let-downs whilst trying to “keep up” with “all that was going on,” because I was young and wanted to feel like I was where it was at; that in truth I often felt burned by what magazines and websites told me was cool; and that my resources were finite (not just money, but time and energy). So I gave up the New Releases sections on Tuesdays or Mondays; and embraced the fact that where I’d really had most success for years, and the fewest empty let-down feelings, was deeper in the shops, in the old stuff, in the Jazz section, in the Funk sections, in the International sections. And with that new sense of direction—which is to say, any direction, not bound by the false teleology of the passage of time ever forward—I came to find the lions share of the music I love most, from across a wide spectrum of times, places, sounds—almost everything you hear at Musicophilia. (More rambling, full tracklist, and the download link after “more…”)

Share this:

Like this:

‘Cassette’ is the sixth of nine mixes from the ‘1981’ box set to be posted here at Musicophilia (the first five can be found here, with detailed information about the project at the first mix, ‘Feet‘). The mix began with a focus on the lo-fi and twee strains of post-punk in the box’s 1st edition. By this, the 4th edition revision, the disc had mutated into something rather broader. There’s still a commonality of unabashedly amateur means, a certain ramshackle sensibility, and a decided quirkiness that means you’ll mistake none of it for, say, Echo & The Bunnymen. But stylistically and sonically, ‘Cassette’ became one of the most eclectic mixes in the set. Partially this can be credited to its ‘Miniatures‘-like emphasis on brevity: 35 artists and tracks in its CD length means it never lingers any one place too long. But in the odder, proto-home-recording edges of post-punk, limited means did not shape the aesthetic as much as with later, more voluntarily “lo-fi” music. So here you’ll find cassette-trade-worthy takes on perfect pop, bristly punk, electropop, DNW, proto-Indie, Rock in Opposition, avant garde feminist art-rock, with an emphasis on the scruffier, scuzzier end of early synthpunk.

¶

There are a few “known” names here (now, whether they were so much at the time): The Clean, Felt, Tall Dwarfs, Half Japanese, The Fall, Television Personalities, and the Violent Femmes. But this disc almost certainly has the highest percentage of any ‘1981’ disc of unknowns-to-be-known-later and pretty-much-always-unknowns. The artists you do know, but in early permutations or flying solo: Laughing Apples feature Andrew Innes later of Primal Scream; Ben Watts shows up here solo, best known as one half of Everything But the Girl with ex-Marine Girl Tracey Thorn; Biting Tongues included Graham Massey, later of 808 State; Plasticland is here in their earliest iteration (with Brian Ritchie of the Femmes), as are Aztec Camera. There are Midwesterners (including many Hoosiers) like Social Climbers, Dow Jones & The Industrials, Dancing Cigarettes, Amoebas in Chaos, Philosophic Collage, and Human Switchboard; West Coasters The Beakers, Nervous Gender, Monitor, and Voice Farm; and excellent New Yorkers Thick Pigeon. Not American are the 49 Americans, a well-connected London artist-amateur coalition that included David Toop; along with other Brits like Ludus (sometimes known for being Morrissey’s pals), The Fall-related Blue Orchids, recently-reissued Diagram Brothers, and Flux of Pink Indians; lovely French Young Marble Giants doppelgangers Fall of Saigon; and Germans Der Plan and the very reissue-worthy Neonbabies. All this, on two sides of the elusive C80: the perfect sound for your new Walkman or Stowaway. Full tracklist and download link after the “more…” link.

Like this:

Musicophilia seems to have had an electronic guardian angel: in a little over 24 hours, the blog has had over 3,000 visits, with over 500 mixes downloaded! This one day now accounts for nearly one quarter of all the traffic Musicophilia has recieved in its just-over-two-months existence. This means a whole lot of people have potentially heard music they hadn’t before, which is the mission of the blog, and that’s exciting. So I can only say, thank you! And welcome to all the new visitors (look here for what I set out to do with Musicophilia). You were directed here for the ‘1981‘ mixes (of which there are at leats four more to be posted), and I am very proud of that project and happy to see it have a second life years after its original release. But I would also encourage you to check out some of the other mixes and series going here, which I’ll introduce below the “more…” link—please take a look.

Share this:

Like this:

I’ve never really understood the practical reality of sleepwalking, but the idea has undeniable mystique. Mainly what I’ve wondered is how the body’s action and interaction with its environment fails to jar the somnambulist into a conscious state. I guess the case isn’t that one is actually asleep, but simply that the conscious, memory-forming parts of the brain are not engaged. I take this to mean that in essence, the physical world has become as a dream, and the somnambulist’s actions in it equally as ethereal, incapable of inducing standard awareness. This is the basis for this mix, then: to guide a virtual, thrill-seeking adventure in somnambulism; no walking to the bathroom or making a sandwich here, but rather, roaming through a dream-world made physical, full of strange landscapes, ghost-figures, fogs and miasmas, echoes and shouts, fear and beauty. Like in a dream, nothing can quite be held in focus, and the laws of physics bend to the laws of imagination. Like in the world of a somnambulist, the unremembered physical world becomes an imagined place of shadows, however solid it was before sleep arrived or will become again in the morning.

¶

‘The Somnambulist’ is the third posted mix in the ‘Sensory Replication‘ series, which seeks to create an immersive aural environment through the dense intermingling of a large number of individual tracks, treated as source material. For the first two mixes posted and a greater exploration of the impetus for the series, look here. This mix is particularly dense, with sixty artists represented in just under forty-two mintues. If you listen casually, you will still recognize music here: a “spine” of central tracks emerges more or less recognisable and intact. But the point here isn’t any individual component, as there are often four, five, six or more bits of “source material” comingling, lurking around the edges, fading in and out of earshot in the landscape; solos, duets, trios emerge and recede. The hope is that you will take the time to listen without distraction, letting all your usual sensory inputs other than hearing fall aside, to see how fully your ears alone will compensate. I pretty regularly find myself standing on a city corner or in a laundry geeking out to the sounds around me, just shy of being brave enough to be that crazy guy who closes his eyes and stands still for a few minutes amongst the activity. So this is a chance to just-listen freely, set in the most bizare bazaar of movement and interaction one could hope for.

‘Heart’ is the fifth compilation from the ‘1981′ box set, originally compiled and released 2004-2005 (the previous four can be found here, and more information about the project and as a whole and photos of the box are here). Most of the time, “post-punk” has a spiky connotation, and an artsy reputation; words we would commonly associate with the period/movement/ethos are iconoclastic, political, contrarian, weird, Modernistic, futuristic, maybe even danceable and funky, in a wiry sort of way. But one idea we might not think of very quickly is “emotional,” unless the brooding, gloomy sub-genre dominates our perception. But even “gloomy” is almost more of an idea of an emotion than an emotion itself; a pose of sadness, a melodrama that does not particularly convey itself directly to any listener not already striking a similar pose. This mix, then, was meant to shed a little light on the occurrence of more mature, fully-fledged emotion: the earnest, the hopeful, the broken, exultant, desperate, dreaming, nostalgic, regretful, passionate, uncertain, and sometimes viscerally angry heart of post-punk.

¶

Most of the other discs in the set were compiled primarily around particular sonic criteria, so in some ways this is one of the more eclectic of the nine. Musically there is a tendency toward simplicity, a degree of spareness, an un-punk sense of restraint; but other moments snarl or get a little anthemic, and others are unabashedly poppy. Among the tracks here are some of my very favorite from 1981: The Cure‘s inimitable (would that none had tried) “All Cats Are Grey,” post-Young Marble Giants the Gist with “Love At First Sight,” Gang of Four‘s Achilles-like tale of “Paralysed,” OMD‘s bones-exposed “Romance of the Telescope” (one of the best b-sides of all time), Raincoats‘ “Only Loved at Night,” Talking Heads‘ biting-or-inspirational “Once In A Lifetime,” and perhaps most haunting, Japan‘s “Ghosts” (which, were it not for Laurie Andersons chart-penultimate ‘O Superman,’ would have to be one of the most unlikely singles of all time). But the Passions, Depeche Mode, Elvis Costello, Durutti Column, Buzzcock Pete Shelley, The Sound, New Order, This Heat, Gary Numan, Psychedelic Furs, MX-80, Ultravox, and the other post-Young Marble Giants act featured here, The Weekend, are all represented here by some of their best work, too. This would have to be the darkhorse contender for best disc in the set, so if you have hesitated to check them all out before, pick up again here and work your way back. Full tracklist and download link after “more…”. Four more ‘1981’ mixes remaining. . .

Back again with the third “reissued” release in the ‘Le Tour du Monde‘ series: ‘Volume 4,’ covering 1968 to 1971. The mood here is a little spookier, a little funkier, a little rawer, the beats are more to the fore. But if you’ve heard any of the previous volumes, you can probably anticipate what’s in store: a heady post-Psych, post-Funk stew from a time of boundless exploration and fusion and invention. Crazy Moogs, slinky harpsichords and Rhodes, choppy guitars, break-worthy drums, soaring strings, Tropicalia- or Indian-tinged percussion, horizon-expanding musique concrete production techniques, fuzz-bass as a lead instrument, sunny pop melodies, heartbreaking singer-songwriting, literal bells and whistles—all unstoppably funky. There is a proto-electro Beethoven cover, a Japanese take on Jefferson Airplane, a Greecian take on “All Along the Watchtower,” a Moog-and-choral take on “Peace Train”. Library sound, West Coast psych-rock, soundtracks, experimental 20th century composers, Motown and Motown-on-the-Seine (or Motown in the Outback, etc.). Over fifteen countries, thirty-five artists and tracks, 2LPs, 100 minutes.

The most surprising result of the recent Musicophilia poll is that in response to the question of what Musicophilia should cover next, “pretty stuff, in general” was tops, with double the votes of the next closest option. Emboldened by that result, I’ve decided to post the second full album (and a remix project) of my own work. Like the first album posted, ‘Complicity,’ ‘The Irish Sea‘ was improvised by adding one extemporous layer of sound to another over the course of a couple days. (So determined was I to record that you’ll hear a couple of unmuffled sniffles from a cold I was suffering—there could be no second takes. It was always my pattern to record in a flurry of days, and then most likely not touch an instrument for months till the next session.) The similarities more or less end at the improvisational methodology. Whereas ‘Complicity’ is a dark, largely electronic, slightly wide-screen and nocturnal affair, ‘The Irish Sea’ was created almost entirely with a cheap acoustic guitar with some borrowed piano, and it paints a winter day on a small canvas. Though created ad-hoc, it is entirely listenable, simple, spare and inescapably “pretty”. I am not a song-writer, but this album turned out to be a collection of songs (even including a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Boots of Spanish Leather”). It is an intentionally small creation (running just under 28 minutes), but it has stuck with me because it is emotionally evocative and feels whole and self-contained.

¶

As a counterpoint to the unabashed English midlands- and Irish east coast-inspired prettiness of ‘The Irish Sea,’ I have also included in the download ‘Full of Blue-Green Blood‘. Created several years later, this was an experiment in using only the final mix-down of one of the tracks from ‘The Irish Sea’ (“Full of Blue-Green Doubt,” an acoustic build in a canon-like form), tearing it apart and pushing and pulling it back together to see how far from the original sound and feeling I could end up. So from the gentle original, using primative wave editing software and no additional sound sources, I created twelve short pieces totaling 24 minutes. Some are unrecognizable, harsh or menacing rhythm pieces; others more clearly stem from the original but are altered completely in mood and feeling. ‘Blue-Green Blood’ is not meant to be a proper companion to ‘The Irish Sea,’ but I find it most interesting in direct comparison and contrast to its source material. The results are not for the most part as ugly as I’d first intended, but I felt the modest experiment was a success—you probably wouldn’t know this album came from one finished song without being tipped off. Full tracklists and the download link after “more…”.

Like this:

Today is the two-month anniversary of Musicophilia, and in that time I’ve posted 15 mixes, had over 6,200 unique visits, 1,140+ downloads, and more than 50 comments. All that exceeds anything I imagined. It’s been a lot of fun, and I’ve got a whole lot of great stuff forthcoming, with hopes to expand the blog’s musical territory further and commence with guest-posts and post-trades with other blogs. But before I go much further, I’d like to ask a few questions of Musicophilia’s visitors, to have a better sense for what you think and what you’d like to hear. So if you have a moment, I’d appreciate feedback via the following polls very much. Either way, thanks so much for listening! (Polls after the “more…” link.) Update: Wow, a lot of responses already. So my curiosity is further piqued, and I’ve added a few more questions, thinking maybe of interest to one another as much as to me.

Share this:

Like this:

I noticed today that the most recent uploaded mix, ‘Les Miniatures, Volume 3‘ seemed to have been removed from the uploading site (I’ve re-upped it, in case you were unable to grab it). If anyone finds a mix unavailable, please let me know via a comment in the relevant post. Hopefully this is just some technical glitch and it won’t happen again. Hope everyone is enjoying the music.

¶

Share this:

Like this:

‘Les Miniatures, Volume 3′ is the second mix in the ‘Les Miniatures‘ series, fifth in the ‘Miniatures‘ method. For more information and the first download, check here. In short (appropriately) these are mixes in the musical style of the globe-spanning, late-60s-to-mid-1970s sound-collecting ‘Le Tour du Monde’ series—but with every track coming in at under two minutes in length, and each mix under forty minutes (like the ‘Miniatures: Post-Punk‘ mixes did for the years 1976-1983). So give them a whirl—you don’t have much to lose, not even much time.

¶

This volume features some very well known names like the Velvet Underground, Bob Marley, Ennio Morricone (though not in his better-known Spaghetti Western mode), Serge Gainsbourg, Syd Barrett, King Crimson and Nick Drake. But it also emphasizes the less-knowns like Sagittarius (for fans of the Beach Boys, The Millennium, or California sunshine pop in general); library hero Roger Roger (of Stringtronics’ ‘Mindbender’ “fame”—seek that one out) and other sound librarians like Oskar Sala, Roland Kovac, and Reg Wale; weirdos like Red Noise, Pearls Before Swine and the ever-wonderful Shaggs; Krautrock stalwarts Amon Duul II and Kluster (in their pre-electro Cluster, more cosmic abstraction days); and lovely Turkish Les Mogol (aka Mogollar) and Japanese artist Hiro Yanagida. Twenty artists and tracks, two “sides,” thirty-one minutes, nine countries—and I’ve got three more like this one nearly ready, so keep your ears open. Full tracklist and a download link to the mix with cover art and “liner notes” following the “more…”.

‘Les Miniatures’ is a new series of mixes combining the methodology of the ‘Miniatures’ series— sub-two-minute track lengths and sub-thirty-minute mix lengths—with the aesthetic and musical forte of the ‘Le Tour du Monde’ series. So you’ll hear sound library tunes, krautrock, psychedelia (especially in the Canterbury mold), proto-punk, a little singer-songwriter, funk (and Eurofunk), tropicalia, perfect pop, early electro-pop and musique concrete. You’ll hear artists from around the world, and more of those strings, those beats, those leaping bass lines, those production flourishes that could only have come from the brilliance of the 70s. A full helping of all of this—in thirty minutes or less. I’ve got four further volumes of ‘Les Miniatures’ finished. The five volumes feature over 100 artists and tracks, and they’ll be coming soon. In the meantime, check out the original ‘Le Tour du Monde‘ mixes for a more in-depth exploration of what’s going on here; or the post-punk-oriented first three volumes of the ‘Miniatures‘ series.

¶

This first-issued volume of ‘Les Miniatures’ features heavyweights like Faust, Curtis Mayfield, Kevin Ayers, Sun Ra, Serge Gainsbourg, Paul Simon, Sly & The Family Stone, Lou Reed, Robert Wyatt and John Cale. But given equal time and weight by France’s ever-eclectic Musique du Monde label are cult figures like Henry Cow, Erkin Koray, Gil Scott-Heron, and barely-heards Seesselberg, Joe Ufer, Orchester Fritz Maldener, Sammy Burdson Group, and Franco Bixio. [I thank the blogs linked in the right column for introducing me to several of these—do yourself a favor and let this mix send you digging amongst the “primary source” blogs, they’re doing the heavy lifting.] Full tracklist and download (including full “album sleeve,” liner notes, and “reissue” notes) follow the “more…” link.

As I’ve said before, I find “post-punk” to be a term of minimal descriptive accuracy, in terms of the character of the music to which the label is attributed, nor even in terms of any meaningful timeline. The types of music we call “post-punk” have less to do with “punk” to my ears than with forms of music and art created in the 60s and early 70s. All that said, for convenience we usually talk of “post-punk” as peaking between 1978 and 1982, being supplanted (ostensibly) closely thereafter by the mainstream ascent of “New Pop,” “New Romantic,” “New Wave,” and soon enough outside of MTV, “indie-” or “college-rock”. And I’ll agree that between the quantitative peak of 1979-1981 to 1983, something does seem to have significantly changed. Plenty of the flag-bearers of post-punk adopted a more through- rather than against-the-system approach (some to great effect, like Scritti Politti or Depeche Mode; others less so, like Simple Minds). But the good thing about “post-punk” is that it was always more of an approach and a sensibility than a close-cropped aesthetic or production value, and it was less overtly based in the typical youth-oriented trappings of pop/rock music; so it never really died as a fount of new energy either for many of its premiere proponents (like David Byrne or David Thomas or Sonic Youth) and younger artists inspired by the freedom it expresses.

¶

‘Post Post-Punk’ is a playful glance at the continuation of the ‘Spirit of ’78 to ’82’ (to put it awkwardly) through the mid-80s and a little of the 90s. Many of the artists featured are directly carrying on from the “peak” years—ESG; Liquid Liquid; Wire’s Colin Newman; Pop Group’s Mark Stewart; the Specials as Special AKA; or Siouxsie’s Creatures—who didn’t fit the slicker sounds gaining dominance. Other included here ‘predate’ the peak and never lost the tack, and simply kept going regardless of fashion, perhaps reinvigorated by their slightly younger peers, like David Thomas; Arthur Russell; or This Heat’s Charles Hayward, carrying on with Camberwell Now. Others were there in the day but became better known for later work, like post-Urinals 100 Flowers; Neon Judgment; Thick Pigeon; The Ex (perhaps the most successful long-time miners of the post-punk zeitgeist); Cybotron; the Blackouts; or Sonic Youth. Finally, a few represent the best of the generation more typically associated with indie-rock or Brit-pop, whose sensibilities had more in common with the ambitions of post-punk artists: Dog Faced Hermans, Biting Tongues (featuring Graham Massey, later of 808 State and Bjork renown), andDisco Inferno (who seem to me a bridge between post-punk, what was called post-rock, and the post-whatever good stuff being done today). Ultimately, though, the mix makes no attempt at any comprehensive argument or any sort of historical revision: it was just meant to be a mix of some of my faves who “carried on” the weirdness. Full tracklist and download after the “more…” link.

Like this:

‘Brain’ is the third Musicophilia-posted mix from the ‘1981′ boxset, and pretty much the precise inverse of the poppy, breezy, songwriter-oriented sound and feeling of the last mix posted, ‘Convertible‘. And I’d concede it’s probably a little less accessible than the first mix posted, the beat-oriented ‘Feet‘ mix. These tracks are the mutant sons and daughters of musique concrete; late 60s/early 70s weirdos like the Residents, White Noise, Bruce Haack; Germans like Cluster and Faust. This stuff is often aggressive, frequently dark, a combination of the visceral and the experimental. That said, there’s a distinct sense of humor running through it all, even if the humor is a little black, and the music manages to be pretty catchy, too. If you’re at all post-punk-curious, this is essential territory.

¶

Featured names include Germans Klaus Nomi, Trio, Einstruzende Neubauten; Brits like Matt Johnson (of The The, presaging Disco Inferno), Fire Engines, Flying Lizards, and the Birthday Party; No Wave elites DNA and Glenn Branca; post-Henry Cow RIOers Art Bears, Homosexuals and This Heat; agit-prop Crass and The Ex; and essential American art-pranksters like Chrome, The Residents, Negativland, and Pere Ubu. It might have made more sense to post this one on Halloween, and the closer-to-celebratory ‘Convertible’ mix after the recent good news here in America. But this is a good one for those flashbacks to the creeping paranoia and anger of the last eight years—this is the sound of smiling through it all, with panache and wit. For more information about the whole ‘1981’ series, read more here. Full tracklist and download link after the “more…”.

Share this:

Like this:

Unfortunately, my computer has become more or less unusable, unable to maintain power for more than 10-20 minutes, powering off without warning. I hope to have a replacement by the end of the month, but that probably means there will be no updates to Musicophilia until then. Got some good things in the works, and if I can get some stability I’ll try to upload an old mix or two. In the meantime, take a visit to some of the linked blogs, grab some mixes you skipped, buy records from the linked shops (especially Exiled–they’ve got a fantastic new web shop up, and they’re the best bricks & mortar in the Portland area) and wish me luck getting back up and running! Thanks for your support and patience. [Edit: Managed to upload another ‘1981’ mix, hurrah!]

¶

Share this:

Like this:

The second posted mix from the ‘1981′ boxset, the ‘Convertible’ compilation showcases a side of the post-punk sound that usually gets the least attention: its poppy, melody-oriented, hummable, playful persona. Some of this gets lumped under “New Wave,” but for many that term connotes a synth-based sound that ascended later in the decade. The sounds on this mix in some ways reflect a more traditional, sometimes even pre-psychedelic, singer-songwriter-oriented “pre-punk” or “un -punk” approach to songwriting. Some of it foreshadows the late-80s rise of “indie rock” as an ‘antidote’ to excessive perceived synthetic-glam, but in 1981 there’s not much of the anti-artrockist twee feeling of 80s indie. This is simply catchy pop music, a continuation of a long tradition, with a feeling that is nevertheless uniquely informed by the heady musical freedom in the underground of the era.

¶

I put ‘Convertible’ together as further evidence that post-punk was fun, for those under the looming cultural shadow of Joy Division and the other dark-side mopers. The music found here isn’t nearly as “cool” as a lot of the other stuff on the ’81 set, but it simply doesn’t need to be: it’s just right the way it is, simple, well-crafted, cleanly produced. As usual, there are big names (Costello, REM, Go-Go’s, TheRamones, Pretenders) and less so (Go Betweens, Pylon, The Suburbs, The Stranglers, and the Necessaries, featuring Arthur Russell, transitional Scritti Politti, pre -Everything But the Girl Marine Girls), but to my ears again the remarkable thing is the parity, the consistently high quality of the era’s broad zeitgeist, between those who received lots of attention at the time or went on to become mainstream acts, and those who never came close (or never wanted to). More information about the ‘1981’ box set in general (as well as the first mix in the series posted toMusicophilia) can be found here. Keep your eyes open for more mixes from the ‘1981’ set in upcoming weeks, including synthy goodness, weirdo careening, and the very height of 1981 “cool”. Full tracklist and download link after the “more…”.

Though it’s not the denotative meaning of the word, for me, “gloaming” connotes ambiguity, a tension between the waning day and encroaching night, a feeling that is beautiful yet tinged with some regret or trepidation—there’s more complexity and mystery to it than a simple synonym to “twilight”. And that beautiful tension is the feeling I’ve tried to create here, as well as a concept that informed the methodology behind the mix (more on that later). ‘Gloaming’ is the second mix I made seeking to create quasi-binaural “field recordings,” to create an immersive journey through an almost physical space constituted of (mostly) musical sound. (For convenience, I’m calling such mixes the “Sensory Replication Series,” an idea explored in somewhat greater detail here). You probably already know most of the artists featured in this mix—Tangerine Dream, Tony Conrad, Mozart, Xenakis, Keith Jarrett, Reich, Cage, Bjork, Eno, Low, 23 Skidoo, Holger Czukay, Vivaldi, Cluster—but I hope that the combinations, contextualisation and sum total make something you haven’t quite heard before. (I’d also like to make special mention of the track “Heathering Blues” by “unknown” Matt Anders, definitely the most emotionally satisfying thing I’ve ever known to originate with Fruity Loops)

¶

This is my favorite short mix I’ve made so far, and despite its brevity (less than twenty-eight minutes) it feels like a full journey. It’s more or less the opposite of the spastic flailing of the ‘Miniatures : Post-Punk’ mixes, in that each section leads very much to the next, and there is a careful and unhurried sense of direction at all times. But like those mixes, it’s a good way to get a lot of listening done in a short amount of time—though this is “headphone listening” to be sure, not so suited for cruising down the highway or running errands. While I’ll tag it “avant-garde,” if you were to try any mix such tagged as a way in, it would be this one. A little more rambling, the tracklist, and full download after the “more…” link. If you do find you like this one, then check out the first posted ‘Sensory Replication’ mix posted here.

Here’s the third and final (for now) mix in the ‘Post-Punk’ subset of the ‘Miniatures’ series–another very short mix (<35 min.) of very short tracks (<2:00). And this one is the best yet, in my opinion. It’s a rocket-fueled midget submarine race, featuring more of the Big Names–Wire, ESG, Devo, Pere Ubu, Suicide, XTC–and more of the should-be-big names, like the MX-80 Sound, the Diagram Brothers, Arthur Russell’s Dinosaur L, Jaki Liebezeit’s Phantomband, pre-awfulness (quite good actually, those first few albums) Simple Minds, RIO-licious Debile Menthol, Pyrolator, Dalek I, and more. You probably have the idea down already–if not, don’t miss No. 1 and No. 2. Between the three, you can try out seventy bands and artists in a little over a hundred minutes. Full tracklist and download link after the “more…”.

¶

Coming soon to Musicophilia: another of the ‘Sensory Replacement’ series (which also happens to be a brief mix) of heavily “texture-matched,” segued and intermeshed sounds; another ‘Le Tour du Monde’ set featuring music from 1972-1974, and another focusing on 1975-1978; and ‘Miniatures’ mixes from genres other than post-punk. Hopefully within a month or two, I’ll be honored to feature guest mixes from friends covering territory such as the unexpected and best Bob Dylan covers ever made, a mix featuring “a couple of favorite dark bossa tracks,” and another introducing Russia’s post-punk-new-wave that I bet is unknown to most of us (certainly to me). Stay tuned, let me know what you’d like to hear more (or less) of, and please contact me if you’d like to contribute.

Like this:

As a break from the usual mix/compilation focus of Musicophilia, this morning I’m posting a full album. And it’s one full album I have full confidence I’d never be sued or jailed for posting–because it’s one of the improvisational albums I recorded at the beginning of this decade. This particular album is predominantly electronic, but too untrained (and manually created) to qualify as “IDM” or any sort of dance-rooted-music. It’s rough, organic, sometimes a little ambient, spooky, menacing, disappointingly pretty, and despite all my intentions when I began recording, emotionally resonant above all else.

¶

I post ‘Complicity’ simply because listening to it for the first time in a long while, it surprises me: it does seem to capture something about when it was recorded (10th-12th September, 2001) and the feeling of creeping uncertainty and desperate hope I have felt over the last eight years. It may reflect none of that for anyone else, I don’t know. On the eve of beginning as a people the process of healing and moving forward, while as deeply mired in the excesses and failures of our time as ever–the album feels surprisingly relevant to me, and it’s also not quite as musically trivial as I thought at the time. I am not a musician, so this stuff was all improvised, cobbled together bit by bit with no existing framework, working on a feeling for sound alone. Despite that fact, it’s surprisingly (annoyingly to me, at the time) song-like and listenable. More rambling, tracklist and the download link follow the “more…”.

This is the second in a series of “miniature” mixes, and the second in the post-punk-oriented subset. The ‘Miniatures’ series feature all songs less than two minutes in duration, and mixes under forty minutes. ‘Post-Punk No. 2′ stretches slightly, back to 1975/76/77 and well outside the bounds of what is normally considered strictly “post-punk”. However, in any way other than a purely chronological utility, I’ve always found the name “post-punk” to be a term of convenience only, and ultimately a misnomer that obscures the fact that the “post-punk sound” was merely a continuation (and later a popularisation) of the arty, but non-virtuoso-oriented strains of rock music that have their roots with the Velvets, Stooges, Roxy Music, Canterbury scene stuff, Red Krayola, Residents, and other assorted weirdos and kooks. While it’s arguable there was something of a lull in this strain around 1976, it’s clear that what Pere Ubu or Devo or Brian Eno and David Bowie were doing in 1975 has more in common with the sounds and approaches to art-making of “post-punk” than with the (briefly) culturally more significant but musically impoverished “punk proper”.

¶

Anyway–all that to excuse a little reaching; and an idea to explore more fully later on. This second volume features some big names–Bowie, Eno, Costello, Beefheart, Raincoats–but also plenty of potential new finds I hope, like the Stickmen, Rosa Yemen (Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s band), Crash Course in Science, Matthais Schuster, Aksak Maboul, and Family Fodder (for me, the quintessential post-punk band in the counter-Joy Division-knock-off mold). Full tracklist and download following the “more” link. Check out the first volume here; and the 3rd is going to be a doozy, so check back if you dig this one.

Like this:

Designed for those days when your messageboard- and text-message- and blog-addled attention span is particularly hyperactive, the ‘Miniatures’ series feature all songs less than two minutes in duration, and mixes under forty minutes. Despite their brevity, every track tells a full-scale musical story-no mere interstitials here. Above all, fun is the name of the game.

¶

So, the kinetic, herky-jerk, anything-went playfulness of the post-punk period seems the perfect fit to kick it off. So here is the first of three post-punk-themed mixes in the ‘Miniatures’ mold, featuring favorites like the Swell Maps, Scritti Politti, the Slits, Young Marble Giants; as well as lesser-knowns like Industry, the Homosexuals, Dif Juz, Voigt-465 and 100 Flowers. Full tracklist and download following the “more” link.

The second release in the ongoing ‘Le Tour du Monde‘ series, ‘Volume 7′ features more of the jaw-drop breakbeats, spinning bass lines, post-Psychedelic production flourishes, tape-manipulation and music concrete techniques, early electronic instrumentation, copious strings, harps, Hammonds, Rhodes, brass arrangements, matured post-folk singer-songwriter tunes, and illustrations of mutating funk as it made its way around the world.

¶

Artists from twelve countries are represented, including sound library heroes like Janko Nilovic, Gerard Manset (a major discovery for those who love Serge Gainsbourg), Roger Roger, and Bernard Estardy; art kings Faust, Franco Battiato, and John Cale & Terry Riley (in supreme beat-centric mode); singer songwriter greats like Karen Dalton, Richie Havens, and Nick drake; as well as representatives of pure-pop, jazz-funk, post-psych and even surf-rock-supreme. Bobby Darin even makes an appearance, and if all you know is “Splish Splash” and the Las Vegas crooning, you’ll be in for a surprise. Tracklist, full album art, liner notes, and download link follow the “more…” link. For the previous release in this series, see ‘Le Tour du Monde, Volume 5‘.

Wow. One week, three mixes, 1,000+ views, 110+ downloads, numerous kind remarks and links. So much more than I expected, and it really makes me happy that that many people (seems like a lot to me) are hopefully enjoying the music. Thank you. More mixes, new and old, coming this week.

From the ‘1981’ boxset, the ‘Feet’ compilation is a rhythm-oriented collection that makes a nice introduction to the set and to the period. Featuring some well-known heavyweights of the post-punk milieu–Gang of Four, Kraftwerk, OMD, Public Image Ltd.–it’s one of the more immediately accessible discs from the box. But it also has a features a few artists who get less general recognition, like Dome (post-Wire); Family Fodder (possibly the anti-Joy Division for me, in terms of more accurately capturing wildly expansive ethos of post-punk); Massacre (Fred Frith’s most bracing, prog-less stab); Dif Juz (post-rock what?); Trio (great band, misfiled as novelty one-hitters); British Electronic Foundation and Heaven 17 (post-Human League); and Goat that Went Om (courtesy of Phil at No Night Sweats, I gather they only recorded this one track). A good mix to pass on to friends. Tracklist, notes and download after the break.

‘CollideCoallesce’ is the third mix in an ongoing series of heavily edited and crafted mixes wherein many elements are layered, combined, remixed/dubbed, or otherwise altered into (hopefully) a singular whole. It’s not quite easy listening, but it’s more accessible than the unwieldy tracklist might suggest. Featuring mostly giants in areas of experimental, electronic, a little jazz, post-punk, and ‘world’ music–Can, Cage, Suicide, Bjork, Stockhausen, OMD, Bill Evans, Reich, Autechre, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, This Heat–the mix nevertheless aims to recontextualise all of these to a degree that makes hearing them here a unique listen for avid fans and neophytes alike. The aim is to create something akin to a 3D sound environment, something like a binaural recording, wherein a stereo signal is perceived with full spacial depth. Of course, this isn’t really possible–but I’d like to hope that if one listens to as many elements as carefully arranged as this, it becomes something close to multi-sensory immersion, hence the ‘Sensory Replication Series’. Notes, tracklist and download beyond the break.

A two-LP set of international beats, breaks, sophisticate funk, sweet organs, harpsichords, heavy bass lines, late psychedelia, bits of playful experimentation and musique concrete, squelching analogue synths, harps, strings, flutes, and a dash of autumnal musing as only the early 1970s could produce. A ‘found’ mix from the ‘legendary’ French Musique du Monde label and their ‘Le Tour du Monde‘ series, more volumes to follow.

This is a blog for mixes I’ve put together, of all kinds of music. If you enjoy what you hear, don’t be shy–say hello. Let me know what sort of things you’d like to hear next, drop me some constructive criticism, or join me with a guest-posted mix. And if you like, subscribe to stay up to date. Feedback is inspiring! Thanks!

My purpose for this blog is to promote the artists, and to encourage the discovery and purchase of their work. Please support the artists featured here, buy music at independent shops. If you are an artist (or label) responsible for featured music and do not wish to be promoted here, please let me know and I'll remove your work. Thanks!

Ongoing Mix Series

Interview – Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips @ The Quietus UPDATE: I’ve created a mix in response to the new Lips album called ‘Zygotic,’ exploring some of sonic spheres that gave birth to ‘Embryonic’. Download it at Musicophilia. You may already know, thanks to a now-defunct preview stream (at the Colbert Report’s website, of […]

Camberwell Now – “Working Nights” (1986) This Heat casts a long shadow, and rightfully so–their blend of the edge and energy of punk with longer-brewing strains of art-rock tradition created one of the most lasting archetypes of post-punk. But an unfortunate side effect is that their brief years of existence can obscure the fact that […]

L’infonie – “Mantra” (1970) [‘In C’ by Terry Riley] Presaging the rocking work Terry Riley himself would undertake with John Cale the following year, Canadian avant-garde rock-and-composition group L’infonie transformed Riley’s ‘In C’ into a rollicking, funky epic. Maintaining the guiding principles of the piece–53 short phrases in the key of C, played in o […]